Luminous Part 15

"That wasn't there before," she whispered.

"Of course not," he said. "But this is the Flow, which can be anywhere at any time and right now it is at your house, on the second floor, just outside your room." Tender leaned on the door with a self-satisfied smirk. "Now you say, 'Thank you,' and kiss me good-bye."

Consuela stared at him and was surprised when he glanced away, embarra.s.sed; a flush brightened his throat, but hadn't made it to his cheeks.

"The kiss is optional, of course," he said. "But I thought you'd be grateful."

I am, aren't I? She was too nervous to be sure. Suspicion blinded her. It didn't seem possible, but then nothing had seemed that way since she'd found the lump. More to the point, it didn't seem right-but she couldn't figure out why. She kept staring at the framed photograph down the hall, willing the image sharper, proving itself real, knowing it would look clearer if she stepped forward. She remained where she was. Why can't I just go?

"That's real?" she asked, stalling for time to think. "That's the real world?"

"As real as it gets," Tender said gently.

Consuela almost frowned as a thought occurred to her. "Why me?"

Tender paused. "Excuse me?"

"If this is real, if the Flow can go anywhere," she asked carefully, "why don't you use it to go back?"

Something in his eyes flattened and his proud smile grew stiff.

"You presume that I want to go back," he said through his teeth. "I don't ever want to go back."

"But the others . . . ?"

"Neither Sissy or V or Joseph or Wish want to go back either-despite what they say out loud to convince one another how much they miss home. They know their lives are no longer pretty or they're no longer pretty-" He shook his head. "But we all want to stay here in the Flow, otherwise we wouldn't be here." He tapped his chest and winked. "Maximum impact, remember? We do better here. But you-" He lifted his hand to touch hers; she flinched. "You don't belong here. V's said it a thousand times. You've said it yourself. You have to go back. V is being stubborn and selfish by making you wait when all he had to do was swallow his pride and ask for help." He glanced at her under his thick black eyebrows. "You should never be afraid to ask for help." His eyes quirked, full of double meanings. She gazed out the door to a familiar world.

"And I could just go now?" She said. "Just walk out the door and close it and be home?"

Tender looked out with her, saying nothing, leaning against the jamb.

"It's up to you, Bones," he said finally. "It looks like a nice life."

Home.

"What are you waiting for?" he whispered.

Home. Don't p.i.s.s him off. TenderTenderTender.

What am I waiting for?

What am I waiting for?

I'm waiting for . . . ?

She searched for it. It was something. Unfinished.

"It's not my time," Consuela said quietly, not quite believing that she'd said it. It was as true as she could make it, although it seemed as if they were both saddened by her answer. Tender pressed his belt buckle slowly, a gentle pressure. Consuela didn't dare blink as he weighed something behind his eyes.

"Okay," Tender said flatly, and closed the door with aching slowness. The latch caught with a sliding click. He let the handle go with a showman's regret. "Have it your way." He waved his hand and her window smeared open, punctured by the Flow. Tender walked toward it.

"If you change your mind, come find me." His voice lilted, almost mocking. "When the time is right."

She watched the Flow slip closed behind him, her window coalescing back to normal and the volatile feeling pa.s.sing like rain. Consuela's hand hovered above the door handle but she withdrew it and glanced at herself in the mirror, half wanting V to be there, spying, half wanting to privately convince herself she'd done the right thing.

She searched the reflection of her eyes, but she found no answers there.

She heard Sissy's crying through the door, artless and broken. Consuela hesitated, not wanting to intrude on grief-she thought of mourning as a private thing done with wringing hands and tugging hair. She didn't know Sissy well enough for that. But she still had to tell her Abacus was out and that she'd left a message. Correction: Tender left the message. She only hoped it said what she'd told him to say.

She was conscious of lurking outside the door.

Knocking cautiously, Consuela let herself in. There was only splintered crying. She had no idea that Sissy had been so close to this guy, Nikki.

The Watcher's chair was empty and the sounds came from around a corner. Consuela crept carefully past the bookshelves, noticing the great, gaping hole where the dictionary had been. She was somewhat prepared when she found Sissy on the floor, propped up against the wainscoting, her hair hanging down over her dripping face and the bottle clutched in her hand. The Watcher sniffled thickly, limp tremors shaking her body. She looked like a marionette with all its strings cut.

"Sissy?" Consuela got down on her hands and knees and touched the girl's shoulder. Her face came up-full and whole, but red and swollen. Consuela could see the pink on the insides of her lids, loose around bloodshot eyes.

"Bones?" Sissy said, then burst into fresh tears, pulling Consuela into an awkward hug. Consuela tried to comfort Sissy's raw hysteria with a confused sort of patting. Sissy was damp and smelled like a warm chemical spill.

Consuela tucked her chin over Sissy's skull and rocked her almost roughly, like a kind slap to clear the senses. She couldn't help thinking that both Wish and V were better at this.

"Shh," she said helplessly. "Shh. Shh."

"N-n-n-" Sissy burbled, trying to speak. Her crying was so hard it choked her. She gagged.

"What is it?" Consuela felt the uneasiness return. She had an icy premonition. "This isn't about Nikki." It wasn't even a question. Sissy shook her head violently. The bottle thunked against the carpet with mute anger.

Consuela couldn't feel her hands. Isn't that weird? In her own skin, she should feel everything, but the world had gone dead and cold in a sort of slow-motion moment. She felt that she knew the answer even before asking, but she had to say it. She had to hear it said out loud.

"Who?" she asked quietly.

"YEHUDAH!" Sissy screamed, fell sideways, and vomited on the floor. Consuela grabbed her shoulder and tried to hold back her hair, like the time after Allison tried chugging her brother's beer. Consuela's hands shook along with Sissy's and the two of them crouched over the acidic puddle of puke.

Sissy convulsed weakly in three quick bursts, but nothing more came up. She cried louder through a cracking throat.

"They killed him!" she spat at the floor. "They killed Yehudah!"

Consuela went all pins and needles. "They who?"

"It! Him! Her! They!" Sissy wailed. "I don't know!"

"Sissy . . ." Consuela pleaded.

"Killed him!" she cried. "Killed Nikki! Someone's out there killing us!"

Consuela tugged her friend sideways, away from the mess, scooting them across the floor. She snagged a box of everlasting tissues and pressed a handful against Sissy's blue eyes. Her tremors were contagious. Consuela could feel them in her chest.

Tender?

"Yehudah's dead?" Consuela repeated, thinking of the dark-haired boy on the chair and the smell of baby powder. He was too nice to be dead.

"They-" Sissy stumbled over the words as her eyes rolled; her tear ducts failed her, although her eyes still shone in the recessed light. "They chopped him into bits. You wouldn't know it was him except . . ." She shuddered. "Except they left his two fingers together, intact, on the floor." She dry-heaved against Consuela, whose heart beat like a train.

"Oh G.o.d," Consuela stammered, surprising tears filling her eyes.

* TenderTenderTender * echoed in her head. Really? Tender? But then, why didn't he kill me? He even showed me the way home . . . She remembered Tender feeding on the hallway floor. Panic lurched. Or did he?

"How could they have gotten him?" Sissy babbled helplessly. Her breath sounded like a stick dragged across a picket fence. "His wards were impenetrable. No one could pierce them in either world. Killian O'Shea was proof of that."

Consuela shook her head, ignoring her own fear, trying to wrap her brain around someone being there one moment and not the next. She knew it happened but not that it could be happening now. She squeezed Sissy's shoulders.

"Maybe he was like Wish," Consuela said slowly. "Maybe he could only do things for others, but not for himself."

"No," Sissy said. "He warded the two of us dozens of times . . . so we could talk together." She wiped her face with her hands and the wad of Kleenex. "It's the only way he would speak with me unchaperoned." Something about the way she said the word brought fresh tears to her worn eyes, capillary pink against the blue. Consuela wondered why there'd been no wards between her and the Yad that one time at the O'Sheas'. As Bones, was she no longer considered female? Or human? Or alive?

He'd called her an Angel of G.o.d.

"Wish," Sissy whispered urgently. "Did V find Wish? Did you tell Abacus?"

"No," she confessed. She'd found Tender instead. Was Abacus even alive? "I left a message."

"We have to find them," Sissy hissed, trying to get up. "We have to get Maddy . . ."

"Wait." Consuela got her own feet beneath her and tried to push-pull Sissy up. It wasn't easy, even with her weighing a good forty pounds more than her friend.

"Come on," Consuela urged. "Let's get you cleaned up first."

She took Sissy under the shoulder and threaded their hands together, brown and white fingers tangled like stripes. Consuela pushed through the door, ignoring the stink of fear and puke, and stepped purposefully through the blur of the Flow. One, two, three, four. The last step swirled into her bedroom, welcoming them with its clean-cotton smell. She turned a sharp right as they stumbled against the carpet.

Pulling her friend into the cloudy warmth of lavender steam, Consuela lowered her onto the shower floor-clothes and all-and cranked the water on.

Sissy sprawled on the tile, limp and surrendering, mewing weak protest behind a lengthening curtain of wet hair. Consuela watched her gentle curls turn into a sheet of tarnished gold, the steam obscuring her tragic face. This strange, melted person looked nothing like the Watcher. Grief shrank Sissy like a deflated balloon.

Consuela grabbed a couple of ibuprofen and a gla.s.s of cool water, glaring once at the mirror above the sink, filmed in mourning gray. She sat on the edge of the bathtub, thinking, until Sissy showed signs of being uncomfortable in wet clothes.

Shutting off the water, she wrapped Sissy in a thick bath sheet, tight as a hug.

"Take these," Consuela instructed. Sissy did as she was told, swallowing both pills and draining the gla.s.s in long sips. "Now, up." Consuela yanked her to standing and brought her over to the bed. s.h.i.+vering and silent, Sissy flumped hard. Springs creaked. Consuela grabbed Sissy's ankles and swung her legs sideways, feeling a sickening pliancy as her supernatural joints gave way, almost leaving her delicate, white feet on the floor. Consuela switched her grip as she tucked Sissy into bed, towels and all. For a moment, she wanted to huddle on the floor and be a loyal friend; but that would be hiding from the monsters outside her bed. Consuela wasn't going to hide.

She pushed wet hair out of Sissy's face. There was a dark patch like racc.o.o.n shadows over her eyes.

"You stay here and rest. I'll go," Consuela said. "I'll tell the others. I'll be back soon."

Sissy's eyes moved a tick to the left and focused. "Be careful," she said.

"Don't worry."

It was a nothing sort of thing to say, but there was nothing more to say. Nikki was dead. Yehudah was dead. Abacus might be dead. And death in the Flow was real.

Consuela left her room, plowing through the Flow, reaching out to find V. It was like stretching her arm outward, far beyond her body, and grabbing him by the s.h.i.+rt collar, the rest of her body following.

She found him in a pink room full of ruffles and white furniture. Most of it looked pristine, but the edges were curled black. There were blackened holes on the blanket and in the carpet, like pockmarks on the floor. The curtains ended in shriveled, crusty squiggles and the teddy bear's fur was singed in curly, tight nubs. Small piles of ashes and smears on the desk whispered of things that once were or might have been. The burns tainted things, like the sound of a slowly-turned jack-in-the-box, making everything dark and tinny and wrong.

V turned when she came upon him in a rush. He was relieved and embarra.s.sed when he saw that it was her.

"You found me," he said.

She hit him with the flat of her hands, hard against the solid slab of his chest.

"You!" she accused. "You suspected! You knew! And you didn't say anything!" she shouted, surprising them both.

"What . . . ?" he said, half blocking her blows.

"You didn't say anything and now they're dead!" Consuela screamed. "They're dead, V! Dead!"

"What?!" V shouted, his voice bigger than hers. "Who's dead? Tender?"

The name enraged her. Now he could say it? When it was far too late? "You're as bad as him!" she screamed. "YOU'RE AS BAD AS HIM!"

Shaking his head, V ignored the a.s.sault. "Who was it?"

"The Yad," Consuela said, her arms flopping down. "Yehudah is dead."

* Yad? No! *

V staggered, looking wild. She punched him again. The symphonic echo died.

"I can still hear you!" Consuela cried, hitting herself in the chest with rigid fingers. "Right here! Right HERE! Heart to heart-soul to soul-'Know thyself,' V! I can hear you!" She was crying, the words coming in stabs. "I can't stop hearing you!"

* No . . . *

"Bones," he started, then switched. "Consuela . . ."

"I trusted you," she hissed. "I trusted you with everything! I trusted you to get me home. I trusted you to keep us safe. I thought that you . . ." She shook her head, the tears unhindered and unheeded. Consuela shuddered, mortified to admit what she'd felt on the closet floor.

She'd been V's a.s.signment! That was it. Nothing more than his embarra.s.sing failure. He wasn't her angel any more than she'd been that drunken woman's dream. Consuela didn't want that to be all it was, but it was.

That was all there was.

The weak, vulnerable feeling warped into a tight ball of fury. V didn't care about her-not like that. He had just been compelled to help keep her alive. Get her back. Anything he did could be part of his compulsion, creating the maximum chance of successful completion by whatever was pulling their strings in the Flow. He was a tool. A puppet. A player. A fraud. And she, the idiot dreamer, had believed him.

She was inhumanly glad that she didn't have a violin-voice speaking her thoughts aloud.

"Don't," he whispered.

Anger mixed with embarra.s.sment and curdled. She drew her hands into fists.

"You don't get to tell me what to do anymore!" she said.